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Economic inequality isn’t just bad for governments, leading to things like the Russian or French revolutions, it’s also bad for business. The Capitol in The Hunger Games appears wealthy, but is only dressed in the drag of real wealth.

Panem obviously has all the building blocks for wide, shared prosperity at its finger-tips. But instead of allowing markets to determine the allocation of resources, the central government extracts resources from the Districts, and uses slave labor to do the heavy lifting.

Imagine if the people of Panem’s districts were not merely slave laborers but were instead consumers in a competitive economy. Obviously enough resources exist for the entire country. The growth in prosperity of the Districts would have trickled up to the Capitol’s inhabitants as well.

Of course, we’ll never have perfect economic equality. That’s a pipe dream. But at some point the balance becomes dangerous.

When people are too poor to actually buy things a society misses out on huge economic opportunities. Economic inequality results slow growth and an unstable political system that’s more prone to collapse. Innovation is hampered, if not halted altogether, by the lack not just of competitive firms, but of a consumer base. Katniss and her neighbors could only contribute their labor to Panem’s economy, not their consumer dollars.

At some point this turns into violent upheaval.

Governments tend to learn this the hard way.

4. War Drains Economic Resources

“Destroying things is much easier than making them.”

Another way to ensure economic and political collapse is by waging war. The resources and capital that could be flowing into the domestic economy, creating jobs and promoting prosperity, instead flow into national defense. In the case of Panem, these resources are used to maintain control over the Districts.

The government of Panem spends a fortune on its elaborate security state. The cost of supplying peace keepers (the maintenance of an entire District) feeding them, training and replacing them would be huge all on its own. But it extends beyond that. For every member of society used to enforce control, you lose a potential productive citizen who could be doing something else.

The money spent maintaining control of Panem’s Districts, and in keeping the Capitol’s citizenry docile vis-a-vis ‘bread and circuses’ is money that could have been spent in far more productive ways. War drains capital from a society, and while it may lead to technological growth in very narrow sectors (guns, bombs, etc.) it tends to create even more economic inequality and leads to an even more unstable society.

Just ask the Third Reich.

War is the ultimate broken window fallacy. And Panem with its persistent mobilization is the ultimate example of that fallacy at play.

5. Technology Can Be Used For Good Or Evil

“The bow and arrow is my weapon. But I’ve spent a fair amount of time throwing knives as well.”

The most jarring visual cue in The Hunger Games outside of the arena itself is just how technologically advanced Panem actually is. The juxtaposition of the bow-wielding Katniss Everdeen and her 20th century mining counterparts with the high-tech Capitol arsenal and its extravagant, gaudy technology is a stark reminder that tech can be used for control.

Those of us broadly categorized as “techno-futurists” tend to spend a great deal of time thinking and writing about the ways that technology can liberate. We point to things like the Arab Spring and say “See! Twitter really is changing the world!” Social media and mobile tech and the many other innovations of recent years are democratizing everything. Citizens can take videos of police abuse and upload it to the internet even before their phones are confiscated. Governments aren’t exactly sure how to react to all this change.

But the Arab Spring is also a reminder of how governments do react to threats from peaceful technology. Bullets are very real, tangible things. Social media is abstract. When Bahrain put down the uprising there, Twitter saved nobody. In Syria, thousands of people have been killed by old-fashioned technology. Meanwhile, oppressive governments across the world are using tech as a more efficient means of spying on and censoring their citizens.

Obviously tech is a double-edged sword. The same tools can be used for good and evil, for freedom or for tyranny.

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The instability of the Panem state was due to its political and economic systems. Market economies and broad economic growth that spreads the wealth across all demographics create more stable societies. Democratic government, for all its flaws, creates more enduring political institutions less prone to violent revolution and dissent.

The catastrophic failure of totalitarian governments and command economies is the result of not allowing other, smaller failures to persist. Markets work because they fail. Democracy works because we can kick the bums out. These things operate and continue to operate because they force us to adapt and change over time.

Furthermore, innovation and technological change create prosperity, whether we’re talking about material wealth or simply the material comfort of having a refrigerator or dishwasher or access to the internet. The broad prosperity that flows from even small technological innovations creates a happier, healthier populace.

The ultimate failure of panem et circenses is its reliance on illusion. The illusion of wealth, the illusion of control. All of Panem is a house built on sand, as is any society cobbled together with fear and perpetual warfare rather freedom and peace.

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Again, there is no meat on the bones of your comment. You respond to nothing at all with nothing at all. The poor readership has no idea if your disdain for markets stems from your socialist tendencies; or perhaps you’re a full-blown Marxist; perhaps it’s some form of neo-fascism at play. Who can tell? There’s nothing here. Besides, to re-read the post you would have had to read it in the first place. I’m quite convinced you haven’t and that your reaction stems from the first few graphs at best, and the fact that this is published at Forbes.

Actually (and again, this goes back to *actually reading*) I never said you were any of those things. I said the lack of substance in your comment made it impossible for us to tell *why* you disliked the post; from which economic or political framework you were aiming your disdain. Try again. This is your third swing-and-miss.

What are you so offended about? It’s just an article writing up some thoughts about the work, not a review, and it’s not saying that we shouldn’t care about people dying, it’s just focusing on another aspect. It’s not saying this is what the work is about, or this is the main thing you can learn from it, just something the author finds interesting to note.

This might be an a propos comment if Panem was a capitalist society. It is, however, exactly the kind of planned central economy our progressives are trying to foist upon the American (and the worldwide international) free market. I believe Katriss and her friends would have appreciated capitalism; it would have meant they could freely hunt and fish on public lands, then sell their game without worrying they might be imprisoned or executed for it. I think Katriss would have made an outstanding entrepreneur in today’s world, though she would probably be frustrated by the many layers of regulations and restrictions.

Good on you for your lame faux-clever attempt to obfuscate Kain’s point with a shallow personal diatribe rather than bringing your own facts and interpretation to the grownup table for discussion. Way to add to the public wisdom.

I’m glad to see this review. When I read The Hunger Games, it was clear to me as well that the dystopia outlined by Ms. Collins is a planned economy run by totalitarians – the very Path to Serfdom our progressive politicians (of both parties) seem to be leading us down today. Thank you, Mr. Kain, for an outstanding rundown of the main economic themes underlying the book.